Piggies in the mud

A while ago I saw  a cake on Facebook which was destined to be recreated. Today I finally gave it a go! It's a work in progress!  My ganache set too much due to monkey bedtime, causing the mud to be a little too textured and the piglets harder to sink in. The ribbon should have been wider and would have looked neater with a single winding. But a midnight amazon purchase isn't always what you expect  :)  Cake is easy enough to assemble. 

I made  simple buttermilk sponge cake, in two 18cm sandwich tins (Nigella, How to be a domestic goddess). I put them together with the buttercream mentioned in that recipe.

Made ganache with 250ml double cream and 400g plain dark chocolate,  I like it sweet so sifted in a little icing sugar. 

Ganache needs to be set enough to stick to sides and not run out. Thick custard would be a good consistency.  Smeer the sides and stick the kitkats (I needed about 20 two finger bars)  around the side. Tie ribbon. 

Spread the rest of the ganache on top. Ideally you would have your piggies ready to go at this stage as they'll sink in nicer. I had to use a warmed teaspoon to smooth the chocolate down to position them.

I used pink ready to roll  icing, but the original used pink marzipan. 

Belgian buns

I thought it was time to attempt this classic. Turns out it's not so much of a baking classic as a industrially produced one :) I keep seeing them at high street bakeries and supermarkets but struggled to find any recipes actually labelled "Belgian Bun" So in the end I went with another bloggers idea. To be fair, hers look better! But mine do taste wonderful!  I added extra dark brown sugar and cinnamon to her recipe.  Next time I will also smear the dough with butter before adding the filling to make it a little more sticky!  

 

Ingredients:

 450g Strong White Flour

10g dried yeast

1 tsp salt

50g caster sugar

50 (melted and cooled) + 20 g butter

2 large eggs

150ml warm milk

200g raisins

1 tsp cinamom

100g icing sugar (more if you like your buns covered rather than swirled)

2 tsp hot water

12 half glacé cherries , or more if you fancy them!

Method: 

I used my stand alone mixer with dough hook to make the base. 

Warm up milk. Once milk has reached body temperature 

(45 sec at 600 W , glass jug in my microwave) 

add the yeast to the milk with a pinch of the sugar. 

Stir well. (If you use fast action yeast, this is unnecessary and you can just follow original bloggers recipe)

 

Put all dry ingredients in the mixing bowl. 

Whisk together the cool butter, eggs and milk+yeast.

Add the wet to the mixing bowl.

Let the machine kneed the dough at medium power for about 5 min. Scrape down if necessary, or fling it up to high for a couple of seconds so the dough can clean the bowl up.  

You should now have a very soft pliable dough. Recipe suggested putting it in an oiled glass bowl, covered with cling film. I left mine in the maching with the lid closed after taking the hook out.  Leave to rest for 1 hour or until doubled in size. 

Roll out your dough into a large rectangle (mine was about 50cmx30cm) 

Rub butter on the dough, sprinkle on the dark sugar and raisins evenly. 

Roll reasonably tightly, creating the longest of the two sausage possible :) 

Devide this into 12 equal parts, if the edges of your rectangle  were  as untidy as mine you'll end up with a few smaller buns :) 

Place the buns on lined or greased baking trays (I used cookie sheets) 

Leave enough space between. 

Leave to prove for another 0.5 hour under clean tea towels in a warm draft free place. 

At this point, preheat your oven to 190 celcius for a fan-assisted oven.

Once risen, bake for 15 minutes until golden brown and hollow to the tap. 

Leave to cool completely on wire racks. 

To decorate

Make up the icing to a running, swirlable consistency. 

Swirl or slather to your hearts content and top with the unmistakeable cherry! 

Bon Appétit!